I plan to do my unit plan on Chemical Reactions, but I have yet to discuss this with my CT. This will be one of the first units taught after the midterm exams in January, so I think it will be good to have this unit plan prepared and completed ahead of time. The subtopics within this unit are describing chemical change (writing reactions), balancing chemical equations, types of chemical reactions, predicting products, net ionic equations, and predicting precipitates.
Activities for this unit will be very important because students may have difficulty learning how to balance equations. A good model used to explain balancing will be to use paper clips of different colors for different atoms. Reacting one molecule of hydrogen and oxygen each will leave one unreacted oxygen atom. Students will see that there needs to be 2 molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen to have a balanced equation. Ball and stick model kits can also be useful hands-on activities in this unit. A teacher demo involving copper(II) chloride and aluminum foil will be useful to students because they will see a chemical reaction actually taking place. If time allows and my CT agrees, I may do a lab relating to precipitation reactions so that the students are the ones causing the reaction.
Activities for this unit will be very important because students may have difficulty learning how to balance equations. A good model used to explain balancing will be to use paper clips of different colors for different atoms. Reacting one molecule of hydrogen and oxygen each will leave one unreacted oxygen atom. Students will see that there needs to be 2 molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen to have a balanced equation. Ball and stick model kits can also be useful hands-on activities in this unit. A teacher demo involving copper(II) chloride and aluminum foil will be useful to students because they will see a chemical reaction actually taking place. If time allows and my CT agrees, I may do a lab relating to precipitation reactions so that the students are the ones causing the reaction.